


The Workings of This Lonesome Charade

by nonisland



Category: Higurashi no Naku Koro ni | Higurashi When They Cry
Genre: Canon - Manga, Canon Compliant, Canon Temporary Character Death, Character Development, F/M, Falling for the Mark, Hopeful Ending, Multi, Murder, No Spoilers For Higurashi Gou, Pre-OT3, Prompt Fic, Rare Pairings, Spoilers, Timeloops, self-parodically niche fic
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2021-03-19
Updated: 2021-03-19
Packaged: 2021-03-28 18:20:19
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,671
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/30143634
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/nonisland/pseuds/nonisland
Summary: What she wants is irrelevant. She shouldn’t want anything at all.June after June after June, Miyo finds herself getting more lonely, not less.
Relationships: Irie Kyousuke/Takano Miyo/Tomitake Jirou, Takano Miyo/Tomitake Jirou
Comments: 2
Kudos: 5





	The Workings of This Lonesome Charade

**Author's Note:**

  * For [Mondegreen](https://archiveofourown.org/users/Mondegreen/gifts).



> I have once again _entirely_ missed the purpose of “throw me a prompt and I will write you a tiny twitter ficlet!” This one is for Scott, who asked for Irie/Takano/Tomitake + Motion City Soundtrack’s “[I Can Feel You](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=RzcUoe7Iy5g)”. After I finished listening to the song and yelling in pain about what a good choice it was I made him beta the entire fic that fell out of my hands as a result.
> 
> Contains uh. *gestures* Canon-typical…a lot of stuff. Needles, Hinamizawa Syndrome, one (1) maggots mention (that one’s less graphic than canon), self-loathing, implied/referenced uninformed consent.
> 
> * * *

_(the first june)_

Miyo has never had…friends. Miyo has never needed friends, at least not since her grandfather found her.

Irie Kyousuke was a useful tool, even more so than she had dared to hope. Any fool could be a doctor denied the right to practice: vulnerable to pressure and an easy scapegoat. Irie-sensei combined that with a weakness for pretty young women _and_ a real interest in the implications of her grandfather's work, little as he cared about Hinamizawa Syndrome. He’d been so easy to manipulate into helping her enact Oyashiro-sama’s curse. She’s grateful to Tokyo for finding him for her.

As for Tomitake Jirou—a gift. An absolute gift. The man is a naïve fool. A little flattery, a little flirtation, and he’d do anything she asked. Him, keeping an eye on her and Irie-sensei so he can report back to Tokyo? What a joke. He thinks she _loves_ him. She could be robbing the clinic from roof to cellar and he’d believe whatever unbelievable explanation she wanted to give him.

“I have your prophylactic shot,” she tells him, smiling warmly.

He looks away, still trusting her. The absolute idiocy of the man.

She’d been afraid that she might falter at the last minute. She’s spent years building this false relationship, after all. What if she had weakened herself along the way, too?

But she kills him, and then she kisses him so he won’t suspect a thing, and she is unshaken. Soon she’ll be a god. Soon both she and her grandfather will.

Tomitake-san makes a joke about his own cowardice, and Miyo is careful to laugh along. It’s too perfect. That he is too afraid of needles to even watch himself injected is another six in the endless string that proves she’s on the right path.

Apart from the details of her own false corpse, everything goes to plan—Tomitake-san’s hideous death, the villagers’ fear, Irie-sensei’s agitation making it easy to suggest he has some guilty knowledge. Miyo wonders if he’d actually liked them. He might have. He’s a soft-hearted fool as well, if he did. She worked for him, and Tomitake-san was no more than a distant colleague. None of them were _friends_.

Miyo can hardly return to the clinic openly. She sneaks in, taking off her shoes not out of politeness but so that she can walk silently on the echoing floors. Irie-sensei doesn’t hear her until she’s right behind him, too late for him to react. “Taka—” he starts; he starts to stand.

Pressure at his carotid drops him; poison finishes him. Once she’s out of the clinic Miyo relaxes. The only thing still left for her to do is kill the queen carrier. She’s done everything right so far. Soon she _will_ be rewarded.

_(before some other june)_

“See that?” Tomitake-san asks, pointing at a bird. A _bird_.

Miyo is wearing one of her tighter blouses, and she’s caught him looking, but he just blushes and stammers when she flirts. How damn often does he have attractive women draping themselves over his arms that he thinks looking at birds is better than finding out what Miyo is offering?

She forces a smile and flutters her lashes. “My goodness, it’s such a pretty shade of blue! What do you call it, Tomitake-san?”

He tells her all about it, at length—more length than any bird could possibly need—but she keeps smiling and nodding, and asks questions like she actually cares. “But I’m sorry,” he says with an awkward laugh. His cheeks are flushed; Miyo can’t tell if he’s blushing or sunburned. “This is much more information than you wanted, Takano-san.”

“I love to hear you explain things you care about,” she lies sweetly, and watches him blush for certain.

_(another june)_

“Taka—” Irie-sensei begins, green eyes wide and bright with shock. Relief slackens his face.

Miyo doesn’t look away as the relief twists into horror. Irie-sensei has never been anything more than a pawn in Tokyo’s game. There is no reason to be squeamish about it now.

If he had been glad to see her when she came in, well. Like Oyashiro-sama of legend, she will be a cruel and horrible god. Who deserves better? None of them.

_(and another june)_

“What do you think, Miyo-san?” Jirou-san asks. The new sleeveless black shirt he’s wearing bares muscles that weren’t there last summer.

Miyo widens her eyes and touches his biceps, letting her fingers linger. His skin is warm under her hand; he smells clean, like soap, not like any kind of fancy product. He’s so plain, Jirou-san, but solid too. “Goodness,” she says with a breathy giggle, stroking the firm curve of muscle.

She’s relieved that night when she gets his shirt off to see for sure that he’s still soft around the middle, that he hasn’t changed that much when she wasn’t looking. She hasn’t read him wrong after all.

A few days later she loads a lethal dose of H173 into a hypodermic and swabs his deltoid with alcohol. He looks away. He’d been just as proud of his shoulders as his arms, proud and a little shy at the same time. Miyo had said just the right things to flatter him.

Her hands don’t tremble as she injects him. She’s a trained nurse. Of course they don’t.

_(sometime before another)_

Miyo has worked with a lot of men: doctors, scientists, Tokyo officers. She thought she knew what to expect from Irie Kyousuke from his dossier. He’d be arrogant, thoughtless, leering. She was prepared.

She was not prepared. Irie-sensei looks, sometimes, but he doesn’t leer. He defers to her as the expert on Hinamizawa Syndrome. He cares about the villagers, trivial as they are—just cover for the mission—and he cares about Miyo too. She gets time off, which she rarely uses. He asks about her day and listens to her answers. He’s _nice_ , and she has no idea how Tokyo found him or Jirou-san.

“It’s so important,” Irie-sensei says, in tones of mixed wonder and despair, as he looks at some of the chemical sequences they’ve printed. “If we can cure this, think of how much better off everyone in Hinamizawa will be.”

It’s such a shame that he wants to make her grandfather’s research unnecessary, when he’s the only one at all she’s met who seems to understand what a difference having proof of Hinamizawa Syndrome would make to the world.

_(another)_

There are footsteps in the saiguden. Miyo is suddenly, on the brink of everything she’s worked for, afraid. She wants to grab hold of Jirou-san, but his solid strength is useless now. In a few hours he will be so overcome by panic that he will claw his own throat out.

Her skin prickles in sympathy, but she wills it away. She has no time for sympathy. She never has.

_(and another)_

Miyo’s original plan had been to sneak into the clinic and inject Irie-sensei with a fast-acting poison while he was still too shocked to retaliate. It seems a natural way for a doctor to choose to die.

The more she thought about it, though, the riskier it felt. Something he could drink, then. Something she could slip into his tea without him ever knowing.

When she slips barefoot through the hallways she’d walked so often over the last five years, she second-guesses herself again. Irie-sensei is _exhausted_ , worse even than she had expected. His hair is lank and tangled, his shoulders sag. If she could see his face, she knows his eyes would be bloodshot and the skin under them bruised with fatigue. She _could_ walk right up to him before he even realized anyone else was in the room. There was no reason not to.

She walks past his office to the little room where they keep tea and snacks. A pot, abandoned half-full, has gone cold. Miyo almost pours it out to make him a fresh one before she remembers.

She tips the poison into the tea and waits. Eventually, Irie-sensei comes to get another cup. He brings it back to his office, drains it, rests his face in his hands. Miyo watches until his arms fall out from under him, his face drops to the desk, before she sets the scene: the vial and the confession note left by his body, the teapot replaced with a clean one.

It is regrettable. Irie-sensei had been a good colleague. But someone had to be blamed, and it was him or her.

_(and yet another)_

She could ask Jirou-san to join her.

Miyo considers the idea with suspicion. It is not as if they’re _lovers_. She seduced him for her plans, that’s all. But he could be… useful. Surely it wouldn’t hurt to have someone familiar with bookkeeping on their side. That, and he’s loyal.

The Wild Dogs are loyal too, of course. Still, Miyo finds Jirou-san’s loyalty…better, somehow. More reassuring.

It hardly matters. She is Takano Miyo; she is Oyashiro-sama’s curse. She doesn’t need reassurance, and Jirou-san is a sweet, naïve fool. He would never betray his original mission. If she asks him to join her, she’ll only have to take him prisoner and excuse his absence to Sonozaki Mion’s club until she can kill him. What she wants is irrelevant. She shouldn’t want anything at all, except to vindicate her grandfather.

_(another, another)_

“Takano-san, are you all right?” Irie-sensei asks.

Miyo looks at him: the concerned frown, the gentle look. She wonders what he would do if she said no.

It doesn’t matter. It has to not matter. She smiles and says in a tone that should be teasing enough to distract him, “My apologies, Irie-sensei. I’m just a little tired today! I’m afraid I didn’t get much sleep last night.” It’s true—Jirou-san arrived last night, after all—but she’s done better work on less sleep before, and she’ll have to again.

For just a second Irie-sensei looks as if she’d hit him. Then he tsks and shakes his head, just as if she were a patient. “Go get some rest while we’re not too busy.”

“Yes, Irie-sensei,” Miyo says guiltily.

She resents the guilt. She resents it furiously, and yet she doesn’t know how to stop it. She shouldn’t even care about Jirou-san and Irie-sensei’s lives, let alone their feelings. She _isn’t_ going to abandon her grandfather’s dream just because the men she’s using are kind to her.

_(and still another)_

“Miyo-san?”

If Miyo holds still, she’ll cry. “Let me,” she says, kissing Jirou-san again, harder, taking the question out of his mouth before he can ask it. “Just—let me.”

They’ve never spent the night together in her house. They never will.

_(the last june)_

“It’s going to be all right,” Jirou-san says, solid and steady as the mountain. More so. The world around her is stretched hideously, streaked with black and tinged with scarlet. Tree branches reach for her, their tips clawing. “I’ve got you. I’m taking you to Irie-sensei now.”

Miyo closes her eyes and buries her face against his shoulder. She was going to kill him. She was going to kill him, and here he is carrying her through a nightmare forest, where the trees’ fanged mouths open to swallow her. Keeping her safe.

“Breathe slowly,” Jirou-san says, his voice so level and clear it cuts through the anguished shrieking of the wind. “Can you do that?”

She breathes. The world ripples like oil-slicked water disturbed by a stone. More voices, not Jirou-san’s.

He pulls her hands away from her throat. It itches so _badly_. She can’t bear it. She was going to kill him just like this. She can’t—she shouldn’t—

“Almost there, Miyo-san,” he says. His hands are tight around hers, big and warm, just a little rough.

The other voices are chittering and cawing in the distance, monsters following along after them. Jirou-san picks her up again, and she curls her hands tightly around his shoulders to keep from touching her neck. Then, faintly, Irie-sensei says, “Takano-san?”

Someone whimpers. Is it her?

“Takano-san, I’m going to inject you with medicine now. It will help you.”

She can’t even feel the prick of the shot through the crawling in her blood, but almost immediately some of the panic eases, the itching lessens from a burn to a sting.

“I have a room for her,” Irie-sensei says.

“Lead the way.”

The world swings and blurs. Miyo grabs on to Jirou-san in terror as he lets her go.

“Easy, Miyo-san,” he says gently. “It’s just the clinic. It’s okay.”

She wants to scream, _Don’t leave me here_ , but why should he listen? Why should anyone listen, let alone Jirou-san?

“I can stay here if you want,” he says.

Something wet rushes down Miyo’s face. For a moment she thinks her skin has split open and the maggots are crawling out, and then it passes. Jirou-san takes a tissue and wipes the fresh tears off her cheeks before handing her a dry one.

“We have a cot,” Irie-sensei says, already turning to leave. “I’ll—”

“I’m sorry,” Miyo bursts out, clutching the tissue. “I’m sorry, Irie-sensei, I’m so sorry, please—please…”

He stops in the doorway, one hand on the frame, a puzzled frown on his face.

“Please,” she says again, “I’m sorry.” She had brought the poison with her, has already forged his confession for all the atrocities she would have wrought. Was saved from wreaking. “I…”

“ _I_ am sorry,” Irie-sensei says.

It makes no sense. She stares at him, then turns to Jirou-san for some explanation. Jirou-san just nods, though, as if Irie-sensei has any reason to apologize to _her_.

“I should have realized you were sick. As a doctor, as a researcher, as your—colleague, I failed you, Takano-san.”

No. She is the one who failed them. They had both trusted her, after all. She had made them trust her so that she could kill them. How she is sitting here now with Jirou-san at her side, resting her hand on his arm, while Irie-sensei looks at her kindly…she doesn’t deserve it.

Irie-sensei straightens, his hand falling from the door. “Well. I’ll go—”

The frightened sound Miyo makes is involuntary, tearing raw and helpless from the back of her throat.

Carefully, Irie-sensei asks, “Do you want me to…stay?”

Miyo nods. She wants to see them both well, both alive. She doesn’t want to be alone in this room with herself.

“Let me just get Tomitake-san the cot and get your next dose of medicine ready,” Irie-sensei says. His voice is very gentle. “Then I’ll come back.”

She wants to ask him again to _stay_ , not just come back, but he—but she was going to kill him. But why would he stay, even if she hadn’t been. It doesn’t matter what she wants. It never has.

She’s squeezing Jirou-san’s arm. He says, “I think Miyo-san would like it if you stayed, Irie-sensei.”

Miyo nods again.

“…All right,” Irie-sensei says. “If you’re sure, Takano-san, Tomitake-san. I’ll come back and stay.”

Night has fallen, and outside the window, the Watanagashi has begun. All cotton, no guts. Miyo times her breathing to the slow drift of light. She had thought the new ritual was weak, a shadow of the true one. Now she thinks she would like to wash her sins off with cotton and set them free. If she were sinless, she could ask not to be alone.

Jirou-san turns his arm over, shifts until her hand settles in his. The door opens again behind them, and Irie-sensei says, “Here, I—ah.”

“Come in,” Jirou-san says easily.

Something clatters behind her; it must be the cot. Irie-sensei circles around to stand by the window, looking down at the river. His profile is familiar, comforting, and so is the warmth of Jirou-san’s hand.

Light runs from Hinamizawa down to the swamp. Miyo imagines it running from her, too. Would she ever be allowed to join in? “Please,” she says to both of them, “stay.”


End file.
